Thunder Down Under!: Day 1

Our first stop was Newcastle, 2 hours north of Sydney. We loaded up the caravan and headed out. Halley was our pilot for the day, and after a few minutes of adjusting to driving on the other side of the road she did an excellent job. Newcastle was more of a pit stop than a destination. Some interesting things to see, but nothing special. We only took photos from the peninsula town called Pickton, from where we could get great shots of Newcastle across the bay. In fact we decided to push forward and spend the night elsewhere. Nelson Bay was the place. We found this caravan park and just set up there. There was a beautiful beach just 40 feet ahead of us. We even had neighbors for the night: Ryan and Katie from England, who also happened to be caravanning from Sydney to Brisbane. They were to spend a couple weeks here and would take their time to get there. I’m sure we won’t run into them again, but nonetheless they were great companions for the evening. We also had some visitors drop by (Australians are so friendly). First up was the drunk bogan (Aussie for “redneck”) named Scott. After talking to us for half an hour about what life in Nelson Bay is like, he decided to head home, shower and eat. He did, however, promise that he would return with some more drink. We thought he would pass out without remembering anything, but unfortunately he kept his word, showing up an hour later even more tanked than before.
For the most part he just hung around our fire, listening to his MP3 player and singing along (loudly and obnoxiously). Two other locals also paid us a visit. They were T.J. and Tyler, 16 and 14 years old respectively. They even brought their own booze, each a bottle of Kilkenny Irish cream which they polished off by the end of the night (Australians also like to drink). Mostly they were harmless, annoying little shits whom we tolerated because they kept our fire going. We sent them home when the young one smashed his empty bottle on the pavement near our camper. They happily obliged, being the polite young boys they are (Note: that last line is sarcasm). Scott gave us more trouble, as he had to be escorted at least a quarter of the way home to make sure he wasn’t coming back. By that time he was completely loaded had already reverted to insulting us, punching our trailer and rambling meaningless sentences punctuated by “f*ck” every second word. I’m sure he slept well that night and doesn’t remember a thing. This is good because he left his cell phone on the ground. We didn’t know where he lived and we weren’t about to wait around the next day until he woke up and called for us to return it. We had a schedule, a deadline and no pity for drunken bogans. The battery was dead anyway. Time for us to hit the sack then. Day one was over and already our trip had been eventful. We said goodnight to Katie and Ryan and closed down shop, tired but excited about what awaited us tomorrow.